The city of St. John’s has been forced to cut its parking meters down to size after complaints rolled in that a new model was out of reach for the city’s shorter residents.

“Not many people here in Newfoundland are blessed with exceptional height,” said Vanessa Crocker, 5-foot-1 and a legal assistant at John Taylor-Hood Law Office, just adjacent to the city’s Churchill Square.

She added, “the meters are taller than I am.”

Parking meter posts have always seemed been a bit higher in the Atlantic capital, but former iterations of St. John’s parking meters all contained side-facing controls, allowing shorter residents to make payments by, at worst, standing on their tiptoes.

Earlier this month, however, the city’s petite residents awoke to a new set of 21st-century meters replete with credit card payment options, solar panels, backlit displays — and out-of-reach top-facing controls.

“Basically if you’re under 5-foot-2, or in a wheelchair, you’ll never be able to see in the new parking meters in St. John’s,” wrote one critic in a Twitter post.

City of St. John’s

Ms. Crocker said she simply tries to avoid the meters “as much as possible.” Her boss, Vicky Taylor-Hood, 5-foot-3, can only complete a transaction by jumping.

And when elderly or disabled clients come to their law office, “they can’t get at those meters,” said Ms. Crocker.

“We understand that it affects our residents, so we want to make sure that we make it as quick as possible to make the change,” said St. John’s city councillor Bernard Davis, chairman of the standing committee on community services and housing.

Thus, from now until February, city workers are roaming the sidewalks and cutting poles to a uniform 34 inches, the optimum accessibility height as defined in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“We take the meter head off, we chop off a little piece of the steel post that the meter head sits on, and then we put the head back on,” he said. “When you get going, it takes about three or four minutes a meter.”

The parking meter episode began 24 months ago, when the Royal Canadian Mint rolled out its new steel-core loonie. St. John’s, like many cities, suddenly found itself with hundreds of obsolete meters unable to accept the new coin.

Instead of merely retooling the pay parking stock, however, the city decided to spring for something a little more advanced: the MacKay Guardian™ SOLO LD.

Sold by Nova Scotia’s MacKay Meters, the unit fits seamlessly onto the city’s existing parking meter poles, but replaces the technology of the previous units with both a sleek digital display and alternative payment compatibility.

As soon as the new meter heads arrived, however, city officials quickly realized they would be an awkward fit.

“We noticed that there was an issue with the meters early in the process,” said Coun. Davis.

The meter heads were scarcely in place before crews needed to be mustered to trim the city’s 1,000-or-so parking meters.

If the pay-parking apparatus in St. John’s is indeed any taller than those in other Canadian cities, the citizens can blame both the region’s brutal climate, as well as their city’s 15th-century origins.

Vicky Taylor-Hood

“Downtown St. John’s is not designed for cars; downtown St. John’s is designed for horses and buggies,” said city spokeswoman Jennifer Mills. As a result, “some of the posts needed to be in unique positions,” she said, such as bolted to traffic signs or positioned well back from the curb against a building.

As for climate, St. John’s is Canada’s snowiest major city, with average annual snowfall of 322 cm — a depth of about two parking meters. In a particularly notable 2011 incident, a completely buried parking meter was sucked up by a municipal snow blower and shot through a storefront window.

“That was a consideration as to why our meters were perhaps a little bit higher because of the snowfall that we have here from time to time,” said Coun. Davis.

Despite the teething problems with the city’s jump to digital parking, Coun. Davis is optimistic, as it ultimately means the end of the city’s previous regime of wild, almost anarchic, parking meter heights.